The Imagine My Relief List…

This list is about broken dreams and false hopes. You would think they are too numerous to count but we will give it a go. Any time someone comes up with a solution to the climate change problem that fails to pass scrutiny we add them to the list.

This started out as a joke, but after yesterday (18th Sept 17) it seems New Zealand wants me to take it seriously. Thanks for nothing, Myrtle and Leighton, I really had enough to do without this.

Solution 6: Come up with the One True Science Of Personal Views.

Science. That’s the thing right? Only don’t get a climate scientist to operate on your liver. Or maybe trust a soil scientist to tell you about the climate.

Particularly if the papers he publishes are not held up for peer review by the scientific community. See, its not really a scientific paper, since its title ends in the phrase ‘a personal view’, it contains very little in the way of process and seems mostly to be a list of graphs he didn’t like the look of. And when I asked a climate scientist about this paper he replied ‘its not been peer reviewed or published of course … I don’t know if anyone has bothered to respond to it’.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Peer reviewed evidence. Another cover of course is to write a bunch of articles about how all the other scientists are dicks. I do agree with one thing though: there’s a bit of psuedo-science around. He just appears to be part of the problem.

If Dr Edmeades, a real scientist, really believed in his work he would present it to other scientists. I’m not reviewing it, I’m saying if its making a claim this big and this important it has to be reviewed by someone. A collection of someones with appropriate knowledge and training.

I am saying his article in stuff is a regular load of old fashioned bosh though.

The fact that an amateur with trouble sleeping could rebut the points in an hour speaks volumes about the way these arguments get repeated. I’m just a small part of a global whack-a-mole contest by the looks.

Dr Edmeades is expressing something we all feel. That climate change is inconcievable. It places us at the end of the normal human understanding of ‘World’. So he should write about that, rather than imagining the observations support his now-broken understanding. They don’t.

Solution 5: Imagine an endless summer.

The NZ Herald certainly punches above its weight on this list. The less you know about this journey, the better this part of the ride appears to be. Especially if you ignore anything happening closer to the equator or the poles. John Roughan decided that global warming will stop with a bump sometime in the future and when it does we’ll be sitting pretty.

Global warming sounds sensational at best and tolerable at worst. It offers us new crops, more kauri forest, milder winters and summers like this one.

Awesome. The best way to do this is by coming up with your own maths. Put the numbers where you like them, and get them from where ever you like. Example: “There a [sic] bikeways snaking all around Auckland these days and its [sic] rare to see anyone on them”.

In the land of boring maths where you live the onerous job of counting bikeway usage is done for you:

That’s 1.8 million trips across 13 city centre count sites and in November 2017, an increase of 19.4% when compared to November 2016. People use them. Not that it has much to do with climate change, but the numbers around sea levels, temperatures, weather events, the near future are derived in much the same way.

Solution 4: Declare it a religion.

The deftness of this move is breathtaking. Once it becomes a religion all bets are off! Not since L Ron Hubbard started Scientology has a cunning old writer worked out the routine that not only beats the house, it becomes it. The Herald is now brimming with thetans and (I presume) when the planet does become inhabitable a 737 space ship will whisk him to safety. If only it might take him now.

Barry Soper claims Al Gore as the head of this religion and ends this section with an eerie but puzzling remark about the opinions of the American people.

While more than 70 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening and almost 60 percent are worried about climate change, just 43 percent think it’ll harm them personally.

Closer to home Ardern would to do well to reflect on that.

Twenty five percent of the American people think the earth revolves around the sun, and sixty two percent don’t believe the civil war was about slavery. Barry is clearly making a point here, but its subtlety escapes me. Perhaps the people on Xenu know what he’s going on about.

Anyway, sufficed to say, once the thetans have left the building we are left with the real state of affairs here at the end of 2017. California caught fire halfway through the year and its still burning. Wellington feels like Sydney and Sydney presumably feels like Mumbai. This only looks bad because its not 2019 yet.

Solution 3: Use a Talisman to make it go away.

Remember when Homer saved the town by stopping the runaway monorail with a huge donut? Afterwards he stared at it with admiration, saying “Is there nothing they can’t do?”.

That’s what the Massey Ferguson is in New Zealand farming lore. Its the first vehicle I drove, sitting in my dad’s lap, and when my son was old enough he travelled with me the same way. By that time Pop lived in town and it was a bit weird, but you get the point. He used to drive it to the dairy to buy milk.

So I get it. How many stories end in a guy rolling up with a fergie coming in to sort it out. I support you for trying it. It was worth a shot. Shane thought so. So did Lockwood Smith. And the current prime minister. Really gave that one a good crack.

Its just that, well I checked with some scientists and it turns out the carbon levels are still increasing.

Solution 2: Disagree with it on a couch.

Leighton Smith proposed sitting on a couch with climate change nut cases and disagreeing with them. He even gave it a crack. He’s really good at this because he has spent many, many years doing much the same thing in a chair. So it was just a case of getting the hang of lower, softer furniture.

Now this will need some explaining. If you’ve spent a lot of time listening to talk show hosts you’ll understand this bit. If you’ve spent that time listening to Leighton Smith you might need climate change explained to you. It is pretty much detailed in all-of-the-rest-of-this-site along with the work of, well, most of the scientific community involved with climate research, the IPCC, NASA (for now) and, well I don’t know, just google it.

Here’s the approach:

Say the climate has always been changing.

Which it has. Scientists agree that we should re-brand ‘Climate Change’ to ‘Climate Extreme Makeover’ to help us understand the difference. “Climate Reboot-the-entire-planet” has also been getting some serious traction.

Say CO2 is not a pollutant.

So it can’t cause problems. Any more than say, water.

Say you know some scientists that agree with you but can’t name them because the Greens have created a totalitarian state where they are not safe to speak out.

Which is pretty impressive since a week ago they were below 5 percent in the polls. “Go James”.

Say the scientists and Greens have an end game where they reap massive wealth by exploiting the gullible masses..

..creating a deadly dependence on their product. Pretty much the way Exxon Mobil did, but this time its super secret and only men as wise as Leighton Smith can see it coming. He can’t explain how this works, and it must be elaborate because I’ve seen how the Greens live. Their leader rents in Aro Valley.

Of course it doesn’t matter that these arguments are nuts, since his solution requires him to agree with you.

Check and Mate. You only win this game if he agrees with you. And why would he do that.

Again, this is a terrific solution and has provided Mr Smith with an illustrious and award winning career. It works on radio. Much like my face. Sadly, the climate remains unaffected by his work.

Solution 1: Plant some trees.

This was the gem that started it all. I really thought it couldn’t be bested and I was wrong. When Mike Hosking pronounced the Paris Accord a ‘rort and a scam’ Toni Street asked him for an alternative and he was generous enough to provide one.

Plant a lot of trees. If you’re into it, plant a lot of trees until to meet your emissions. Easiest thing to do.

This line is actually the one that first caused me to gasp “Imagine my relief” to myself in muted wonder. Until I took a closer look. If you’re not into it, then you don’t have to? That won’t work, since you’re (presumably) accepting the whole basis of the greenhouse thing. So lets imagine everyone plants trees. Let assume everyone grows a tonne of tree a year to offset the emissions for that year of driving around. They then have to keep that tonne of tree in the ground for the rest of all time. If you burn it, the CO2 goes back. If you let it decompose, the CO2 goes back. So pretty soon you’re trying to keep 10 tonnes of tree up in the air while making the eleventh. Whenever a tree dies or burns you need to replace it immediately with the same mass of carbon.

And that’s just for your car. If you wanted to cover the number of trees required for all of your annual emissions you’d need an awful lot more. I’ve already wasted far more time on this idea than Mike did so someone else can work that out.

Sufficed to say, trees only buy you a bit of time. The fact that we’re talking so much about them now is an indicator of how desperate things have become.

Or, as Moira helpfully suggested – you grow them on another planet. With the carbon from this one. That would do the trick.

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Paris Accord

Even if the original participants stuck to every resolution the planet will sail past the 2 degree point that was thought to be the point at which catastrophe might be averted. Imagine My Relief attempts to shine some light on New Zealand’s part in this problem.